ego ego ego

i've been sick for about a week now and so i've had very little time to write, see friends, hear stories, or just about anything.  it's nice to be feeling a bit better but i'm not out of the woods just yet.  i digress...

in spite of being sick i did decide to go on a walk with my friend Jenn last week.  since being sick i've had to cease my training because, well, i can't breathe!

jenn is one of my best friends.  she is amazing.  she is smart, fun, sweet, and beautiful.  however, she has one flaw...her ex.

like many of our ex's he is still 'around'.  he's one of those we can't shake 'em ex's - even if it is to our detriment.  so she still talks to him, sees him, blah blah blah.  i sit back, listen and seriously do not judge - been there done that, i am in no place to judge anyone, as evidenced by my lack of decision making ability.

back to the walk, jenn and our chat.  so Jenn's ex is still hanging around and he's well, what would i say about him?  first i would say i don't know him.  i would say i have met him once, he was leaving as i was arriving.  i would then say he isn't very nice to her IMO (in my opinion) and i would have to say he has the ego the size of texas.  so was it any surprise the other night while having a conversation with Jenn he said, "it must be nice to talk to me". 

yep, you read it, "it must be nice to talk to me".  you see, he feels he brings some light to her life.  he is the epiphany she has been waiting for.  had she not had HIM to talk to well, she may not have worked through her stuff.  you see apparently this educated woman would be nothing had she not had him to talk to. 

bottle it.  put a cap on it.  save it.  that might be the BEST thing I have ever heard from anyone.  any woman or man.  that level of ego is just delicious.  how do you make that shit up?  you don't. 

ah, thank you jenn's ex - i am getting hours of entertainment off of this nugget.

one minute romance

i read an article about 20 years ago that has stayed with me forever.  i hope you have had as many of these delicious encounters as i - here it is:

Short Timers by Megan Edwards

I’ve been thinking lately that we put a heck of a lot of emphasis on long term relationships. We act like they are the only ones worth having, and if we can’t succeed in maintaining one, we’re failures in the love arena. If our picture won’t someday appear in the society section alongside a description of the spangled dress we wore to our golden anniversary fete, well, then just forget it.

Well, I say forgetting it is a grand idea, and now I’m paying more attention to the relationships at the other end of the spectrum. You’ll never read about them in the paper, and if you don’t pay attention, you may not even notice you’re having one. I’m talking, adventurers, about One Minute Romances.

One Minute Romances are the kind you have when you are in an airplane, a train, a waiting room, or a concert. They happen when you sit next to someone and, for whatever reason, you start to talk. Somehow, without many words getting exchanged, you find you are enjoying yourself immensely. A lovely feeling wells with you, and, if you didn’t know any better, you might think it was love.

In the last couple of months, I have been lucky enough to enjoy not one but two One Minute Romances. The first time I was on an airplane. My seatmate was an antique dealer from Chicago. Our conversations ranged from things to do in Washington DC to his honeymoon in the Pocono’s. I can still see his face, still remember the pleasure I felt talking to him. It was one of the nicest flights I’ve ever taken. And then, the plane landed, we said good-bye, and that was that. I don’t even know his first name.

The other time was on a train, and I took an empty seat next to a man reading a paper. Again, conversation broke out, and again we shared the most delicious moments as the countryside rolled by, and our minds, for a moment, touched. If I didn’t know better, again id say what I felt was love. Again, we parted anonymously, and I’m left with a perfect cameo, a delightful interlude to keeping my heart alongside other lovely mementos of past time and places.

There was a time when I would have complicated such meetings with a running commentary in my head. The part of me that’s always brining up the past and worrying about the future would have begun to scream, “Watch out Meg! What if...? Remember when...?” That part of me would have done its damnedest to keep me from enjoying the only thing we ever have to enjoy, a pure and present drop of time.

It’s the same part of me that looks at two smiling faces in the newspaper next to an article about their forty years of marital bliss and feels gloomy and fragile and hopeless. It’s the part that can’t ever seem to understand that an ocean is made of countless drops; that a lifetime piles up one little moment at a time.

So, adventurers, I silence that hopeless voice that has no present by staying in the present myself. If for a moment my path crosses the way of a fellow traveler, and for a brief space our souls touch, how is that less than golden?